Poor Picture Quality in iMovie Which USB Camcorder Will Work and Which Won'

Question

Dear Colleagues,
I continue to read accounts by readers regarding iMovie 98 havinga poor image quality when sharing to iDVD. It has been suggested that users with non-High Definition camcorders, standard DV8 camcorders such as my Sony DCR-TRV315, are stretching the Movie to far when using the Large and Medium setting for sharing ing to iDVD and other media.
If this is the case, what pixel size should I use when sharing to iDVD. I had understood that 720X480 was the standard format for non-High Definition Digital 8 Camcorders. So what correct pixel ratio should I use for DVD playback on a wide-screen HDTV with non-HD recordings.
I am planning to purchase a Sony USB camcorder and I continue to hear reports that they and other brands of USB camcorders won't work with iMovie 08. Is this simply a new user not fully understanding how his new camcorder works?
If this is not the case, how can one determine which USB camcorders are compatible with iMovie 08?
Please get back to me soon.
Best regards,
Robert O. Cobb
aka The Clemmons Kid

Answer 1

A great deal has been said about im08 degrading interlaced video, to qualify the matter im08 resorts to progressive video depending on the capabilities of your mac, I for example can achieve full quality 1080i exports.
Additionally the matter has to be put into perspective. Of course a source video looks clearer on a mac if it is displayed in it's original interlaced format on a frame by frame basis, but this isn't how one would watch video. interlaced video looks dreadful on a computer monitor and needs to be de-interlaced to be watched, additionally you would never watch a video frame by frame and so comparing video in this way is somewhat pointless. There is a quality difference on some macs but if the video is compared in a realistic way the difference is quite small and often unnoticeable.
720 x 480 as you likely realise uses non square pixels which will be converted to square pixels for your AVC exports in im08, to maintain the aspect ratio of the pixels you should export to DV.
There are a list of supported cameras here, but of course there are many that are not in this list that do work. If you select a camera, post to see if anyone has had any compatibility issues, but as you seem to be aware a number of apparent issues are as a result of user errors rather than incompatibility.